Open Your Eyes, Daybreaker
by Emmy Bookman
Summary: It's been five years since Hiccup destroyed the dragon's nest and dragons have become a regular part of Viking society. On Rok, a neighboring island, the Vikings are less than kind to their dragons. As Hawk Grimmson begins his adventure, war breaks out.
1. Exit Exams

It's been five years since Stoick the Vast discovered the dragon's nest. For the Vikings of Berk, that meant a new harmonious existence with the scaled creatures, but for the Vikings of Rok, it meant something else entirely. Rok is roughly a third of the size of Berk and nearly four days away if you travel by sea. If you thought Stoick and his people were stubborn, you should try meeting Grimm the Victorious. It's like comparing people from a normal town to those from a small backwoods town. While Rok might be a third of the size of Berk, the people are three times as stubborn, three times as superstitious, and three times less educated. My name is Hawk Grimmson, I'm twelve years-old, and, if you haven't guessed, I'm the son of Grimm and his perfect Viking wife, Nova.

Like in our neighboring Island, Berk, here in Rok, we begin our dragon training at the tender age of ten. The big difference is that we still consider dragon "training" to be dragon "hunting." Like any village of Vikings, we were all thrilled that the queen dragon and the nest had been destroyed. It meant that the attacks on us via dragon express became few and far in between. However, here in Rok, we're a little... stuck in our ways. Instead of befriending the dragons, my father saw the sudden revelation of dragon training as a weakness, a weakness which he just had to take advantage of. Instead of training the dragons, he decided that they had to be tamed. Any dragon left untamed or unbroken was still considered a threat to our village. Dragons were turned into our slaves and treated like nothing. Even as a small child, I didn't agree with how we were treating our dragons, but I knew better than to question a large, tough, unintelligent leader like Grimm the Victorious.

Dragon training in Rok was the closest thing there was to school. You began when you were ten and graduated when you turned twelve. Once you graduated, you were sent out and given seven days to capture your own personal dragon. I had learned all the tricks of the trade when it came to taming dragons. While somewhere deep inside of me I knew it was wrong, I still went about taming dragons at the top of my class. Even as I stood before my village in the ring on the day of my graduation, I wasn't sure if I even wanted a dragon as my own. I was getting ready to depart on my first mission as a man when a large shadow trailed over me followed by a gust of wind that could only be caused my large dragon wings. My wavy shoulder-length brown hair blew this way and that as I shielded my dark gray eyes and looked into the sky.

"No way, what's Hiccup doing here?" I asked as I watched him land outside the large stone building that was my house. My house was on top of the largest hill of the village. The higher your home was, the higher status you held. No house was higher than Grimm the Victorious's. To satiate my curiosity, I made my way back up the hill to my house. As I skid to a stop, Hiccup's dragon, Toothless the Night Fury, spun and gave me a watchful eye.

"But dragons are harmless, Grimm!" Hiccup was exclaiming to my father. I don't know what the boy, only three years my senior, thought he was going to say to my father to make the stubborn man change his mind at all.

"Harmless! That word hardly explains why so many of my men are missing their limbs! Dragons are dangerous beasts that must be kept in check!" my father roared back at Hiccup. The teenage boy from Berk looked slightly crestfallen.

"If they're attacking you it's because you're mistreating them. They don't behave like that back home because we treat them with respect. They're living creatures, too, you know!"

As Hiccup and my father continued to go back and forth with each other, getting absolutely no where, I was busy watching Toothless. I'd never actually been so close to a Night Fury before. While we had plenty of dragons in our pin, no one in Rok was quite skilled enough to capture the ever evasive Night Fury. As if he were able to read my mind, the large black dragon grew a smug look on his face before his scale lip twitched upward. I thought he was going to growl at me or zap me or something, but instead, it looked like he was trying to smile. I just blinked in surprise.

"So... that's how you got your name..." I murmured, placing my hand son my knees as I tilted my head down to get a better look at his mouth. As I did so, Toothless suddenly reared his teeth. They popped out of his gums like daisies popping out of the snow. I hadn't expected it, so I jumped with a start and fell backwards onto my rear. I could have sworn the dragon was laughing at me, but that didn't matter because, with my clumsiness, I had drawn attention to myself.

"What are you still doing here, boy?" my father growled at me. Hiccup turned and looked at me before he shot Toothless a suspicious glance and the dragon tipped it's... ears..? back and grinned toothlessly at his companion.

"N-nothing, Dad," I began to stammer. "I was just wondering what Hiccup was doing here," I explained.

"It's none of your business what this twig of a boy is doing here! Your time is already slipping away! Get your rear end out there and make me proud before I disown you!" he growled some more. Hiccup gave me an apologetic smile. I'm not sure why, but I think it's because he knew what it was like to be in my position, but I quickly just nodded to my father and scrambled to my feet and back down the hill. By the time I got to the tree line head off into the forest, Hiccup and Toothless were soaring through the sky. They obviously hadn't made any impact on my father.

A sigh escaped me and I turned to go on with my quest to capture a dragon for myself, but as I turned, I found myself started again. Standing not five feet away from me was Sula, a girl that had also graduated from dragon training alongside me.

"Why the long face, Hawky-poo?" she asked me with a wide grin on her face. Sula's mother was a pirate from a far away land who ended up in Rok somehow. Because of that, Sula and her family (aside from her father) looked completely different from the rest of the Vikings. They were smaller and faster, and I'm pretty sure a lot smarter. I think Sula believed that, too, because the look on her face was always confident, like she knew something I didn't, even though I finished at the top of our class and she finished second.

"What long face? What are you still doing here? Shouldn't you be gone already?" I asked her, furrowing my brow.

"Shouldn't YOU be gone already? What was Hiccup doing here?" she asked, pushing herself off of the tree she was leaning on as I walked past her so that she could follow after me.

"I don't know, something about us not treating dragons with respect. It sounded pretty lame to me," I said, shooting a suspicious glance over my shoulder. I had never voiced my doubts about our methods of dragon training to anyone before, but that knowing look always plastered on Sula's face made me nervous.

"Oh yeah, totally lame. Who does that Hiccup think he is? Discovering the nest... Destroying the Green Death... Being the first Viking to ever ride a dragon! He's gotta be totally clueless, huh?" she went on, her voice oozing sarcasm.

"If you don't like it, why don't you take up your mother's occupation instead and sale away? No one told you that you had to tame dragons," I spat at her, even though I really just wanted to agree with her.

"Eh, I guess I just like it here," she said with a shrug as if my words hadn't stung her at all. Really, she was used to getting treated like an outsider. Had I mentioned before how stuck in our ways we were? "So, what kind of dragon are you going to track?" she asked, her dark eyes suddenly full of excitement.

"I don't know," I said, digging into my bag for my small dragon manual. I had made my own travel-sized copy back when we started training so that I didn't have to sit around with the others. One dragon manual for a hand full of students just didn't make sense to me. When Viking youth got together, we got easily distracted. "I was thinking about a wyvrern, like a Timberjack or something," I said with a shrug.

"A Timberjack? No one's seen one of those in ages and they're twice the size of any of the traditional riding dragons," Sula observed.

"No kidding? The bigger the better," I said dryly.

"Or the bigger the target. How are you going to be at all stealthy with a dragon like that?" she asked skeptically.

"Why are you asking me so many questions? Shouldn't you be worried about which type of dragon you're going to get instead?" I grumbled.

"Oh, I already know I'm going to get a Night Fury. I have no doubt in my mind," she said arrogantly.

"A Night Fury?" I asked, stopping to give her another dry skeptical look. "Hiccup's the only person in history to manage that feat," I added, rolling my eyes before I continued walking.

"Which means that it's a feat that can be managed, and I plan on doing it, you just watch!" she said, but I had drown out her voice already. We walked on for a long while and she made an attempt to get me to talk, but I didn't want to argue with her. I guess you could say I got moody from time to time. I really wanted the quiet of a solo journey so I could concentrate on what sort of dragon I should get for myself, but I couldn't think with her going on and on.

"So where are we headed anyway?" she asked finally.

"I am headed towards the northeastern coast where all the rocky caverns are. I don't know where YOU'RE headed," I seethed pointedly.

"Oh! I bet that's a great place to find all sorts of rare dragons. You know dragons migrate, right? So different types of dragons one through our islands at different times of the year. Did you know that Night Furies aren't the only dragon in their direct line? They have a cousin species called Daybreakers. They look about the same except they mimic sky during the day time instead of night time, like the Night Fury. Daybreakers come in whites and silvers instead of blacks and grays. They still shoot lightning, I think, but I don't know much else about th-"

"Do you always talk so much?" I interrupted. Like I cared about a Daybreaker or whatever she was going on about.

"I was just saying, if would be even cooler to get a Daybreaker than it would be a Night Fury. My mom's told me stories of the Daybreakers that she's heard from her travels. That's one of the reasons she came to Rok originally. She was tracking some. Wouldn't it be nuts if you caught one?" she laughed, like it was hysterical- the thought of me catching a rare dragon.

"Yeah, well, I'm planning on getting a dragon that no one in Rok has, so it wouldn't be too nuts. Alright, now will you shut up?" I asked. Twelve years-old might have been the age of a "man" in Rok, but it didn't necessarily mean I was mature. Sula just blinked and me and shrugged.

"I'll be quieter after lunch. I'm hungry, can we stop?" she asked, blinking at me with large eyes. I scowled at her for a moment, but there was just something about girls and those faces they made that I couldn't say no to. I groaned.

"Fine, whatever. I still don't see why you're following me. We're supposed to be doing these hunts alone," I said despite the fact that I was starting to grab sticks and twigs to start a small campfire for lunch.

Lunch came and went and I had to admit that I felt a lot less hostile towards Sula with a full stomach. By mid-afternoon, we could smell the salt of the ocean as we neared the rocky shoreline of the northeastern edge of our island. I immediately began to lay traps. I wasn't going to waste anymore time. I only had seven days to catch myself a rare dragon. Sula just laughed at me and continued slacking off.

That's pretty much how it went for the next four days. I had managed to catch a few dragons in that time, but I wasn't satisfied with any of them, so I released them and reset my traps. Sula complained about being bored, but she really wasn't making any effort to catch a dragon. It didn't make sense to me why she was slacking off. If she didn't return by the end of the seventh day with her own dragon, she wouldn't be allowed to ride one ever again. It was like a rite of passage into adulthood and she wasn't taking it at all seriously. It was dusk that fourth night that changed everything, though.

"Sula, are you going to set a single trap?" I asked as we sat around my fire. It was getting cool outside and the sky was turning a deep orange.

"Eh, it doesn't really matter to me, to be honest. I'd rather not use dragons as war machines. If I don't catch one, I don't care about not being allowed to enslave them for the rest of my life," she said, once again with sarcasm pulsing through her tone.

"Then why did you try so hard during training?" I asked her. At that, she just looked at me for a long moment.

"I AM half Viking, too, you know? If I didn't try hard, my dad would have been really hard on me, so I figured once I graduated, I'd just fail to capture a dragon. I could be a blacksmith or something, I don't really care. What about you? Why did YOU try so hard? Your heart obviously isn't in any of this," she said nonchalantly.

"W-what do you mean? Of course my heart is in it!" I scoffed. "This is what I was meant to do! I don't know what you talking about," I continued to lie. She just gave me a droll stare.

"C'mon, Hawk, you don't have to lie to me, you know. I can tell, you're way too smart for this big brutal Viking thing," she rolled her eyes as she dug into her own bag for an apple. It was just as she sank her teeth into it that a blinding light filled the sky. A few seconds later and the ground not too far off exploded as if something massive had fallen from the heavens. Then the unmistakable cry of a dragon met our ears.

Sula and I both rose to our feet and dashed to the crash site. We skid to a stop as the dust cleared, and what met out eyes made both of our jaws drop. There, wrestling around in the large crater, was two dragons. One was black, the other was silver. It was a Night Fury and-

"A Daybreaker!" Sula gasped. I looked from her down to the dragons that were roaring and snapping at each other. If there was one thing I learned in dragon training, it was not to get in between two dragons having it out amongst themselves. I looked from the black dragon to the silver one. Then, the stubborn look returned to my face. I nudged Sula and pointed down at the more rarer of the two dragons.

"Dibs," I said simply. Finally, I managed to make the girl scowl at me. I grinned.

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Author's Note

Thanks for reading my first chapter of my How To Train Your Dragon fic! It's been a while since I've written anything for a male character, so please forgive me if the perception seems a little off! I really like Hawk's character so far. Here's a ref pic for him: .com/albums/r198/Jordan_Nichol_the_ . Anyways, I really hoped you enjoyed it. Reviews are loved 3 (Ps: Sorry if there are typos or grammatical errors! It happens...)


	2. Bonding

Sula gave me a childish glare as I laid claim to the rarer of the two dragons. I didn't really notice, though, because I had already begun to creep around the side of the crater that the dragons had made upon their crash landing. They were still growling and swiping at each other, so my descent went completely unnoticed. The sun was still sinking in the sky, so when I realized I was able to see each scale of both dragons in detail, I realized I was probably way too close. Somehow, though, I was unable to break my fixation with the impressive beasts. I wanted closer.

As I stepped forward, I lost focus on my footing. The tip of my toe ended up hooking under a large round stone, so that, when I stepped, the stone went rolling down into the center of the rocky crater- right where the dragons were battling it out. Immediately, both dragons perked their heads up along with their ear-like antennae. I suddenly had four massive yellow-green eyes staring blankly at me before they fell into glares. Both creatures rounded on me, their heads low as they growled, making a display of their small sharp fangs.

I had been the top graduate of my dragon training class, but I'd never been forced to face more than one dragon at a time. Now I had two dragons eyeballing me like a dinner bell sounded somewhere. They slowly moved towards me, and I slowly tried to back away. The problem was that I had moved too far into the crater to be able to just scramble out. My back was against a wall, and I had made the mistake of completely forgetting my pack up by my and Sula's campfire. All I had on me was my slingshot and the few pebbles that I'd wrapped dry grass around so that they'd be easy to catch on fire, since dragons weren't fire resistant on the inside.

"S-S-Sula!" I stammered quietly. I didn't want to alert the dragons any more than I already had. If I made any sudden movements or sounds, I knew they'd pounce on me instantly. My dark slate eyes searched where Sula had been standing, but her back was turned to me and then she disappeared.

"Seriously!" I hissed after her. She was abandoning me! She was just going to run off and let me be eaten by a couple of dragons! No doubt she just wanted the Daybreaker to herself. That would make her father proud and her mother would finally get to study one from up close like she'd always wanted. I should have known that the village outcast would just leave me hanging like that!

I continued to curse the girl as the dragons came closer and closer like they were some kind of large jungle cats. The next sequence of events happened so fast: I flexed my fingers and reached for my slingshot; the dragons growled loudly and pounced at me; then nothing happened. All I heard was Sula's voice suddenly.

"Back!" she yelled. When I realized what had happened, I blinked with a stupid look on my face. Sula had just back to her pack and grabbed a smoked eel then dived into the crater, landing in between me and the dragons before they could tear me to bits. Now, she was flailing about, waving the eel around and stepping towards the dragons. The dragons hissed and reared backward, moving away from the dead sea creature with great distaste. Of course, I knew about the eel thing. That was something standard they'd taught us in training; I just didn't carry an eel on me at all times. It was what happened next that I thought was just crazy.

As the dragons retreated, they began to part and Sula continued to move towards the Night Fury. She continued to back it up towards the crater wall so that it couldn't go anywhere. Then, when she was close enough, she dropped the eel and dove forward, essentially tackling the black beast. Her hands balled up to mimic claws and she began scratching the dragon all over its head and neck. For a long moment, I thought she'd completely lost her mind. Then I realized what she was doing.

"A-are you TICKLING it!" I yelled in shock. Her hands slid down the side of the dragon's head and under its chin. Its large green eyes grew wide with surprise before they closed and a toothless smile spread across its face as it fell forward, limp, on its belly and let out a loud snore.

"Yes, I was, and I suggest you do the same!" she said, pointing urgently to my left. The Daybreaker had taken its chance and used my distraction to slowly make its way back around, avoiding Sula and her eel, so that it might pounce on me.

I really didn't have time to think, or much other option. The white dragon leapt into the air. All I saw was teeth, claws, and large yellow eyes coming at me before I closed my own eyes and extended my hand. I thought for sure that my life was over, but when I opened my eyes again, the dragon had landed inches in front of me and I had somehow managed to start scratching it along its right ear. Its eyes were closed and its whole body was wiggling as it enjoyed the scratching. Like Sula, I continued the gesture all along the dragon's head and neck before moving to its chin. In moments, both dragons were napping happily.

My jaw fell slack as the Daybreaker flopped over before me. I just looked up at Sula with utter disbelief on my face. She was just standing back with her arms crossed and a satisfied I-told-you-so look on her oriental face.

"How did you know to do that?" I asked. You see, in Rok, they didn't teach us the affectionate methods of training dragons. We didn't know that they loved grass, were suckers for being pet, or that sharing a meal with them was a sign that they actually accepted you. All we knew was that they hated eels and could be destroyed with fire from the inside out.

"My mother's a total gossip queen, but I guess that's just how all the women are in China, you know?," Sula said with a shrug. "She's been telling me stories she's picked up here and there about Hiccup and how he managed to train Toothless. He's quite the hero, you know? Dragons are just like any other animal and they enjoy simple things. You're more likely to take your beast there if you're kind to it," she said, gesturing towards the sleeping dragon at my feet. "It's a pretty neat trick though, if I do say so myself. They can't resist it and will fall asleep any time you give them a nice rub down. They're just like any dog or cat someone might keep as a pet. I don't know why we're so cruel to them here," she trailed off as she kneeled down to pet her sleeping Night Fury.

I just blinked at her for a moment and shook my head. I wouldn't have known what to do if she hadn't made the comment about how cruel we were to dragons in Rok. That one little comment allowed me to make my exit.

"You were raised with such strange ideals," I said to her in a low disapproving tone, even though I partially agreed with her. Well, whatever she believed, it would help me tame the Daybreaker much faster and return home. Our time was running out anyway.

I climbed out of the crater and ran to get my pack. When I returned, I took out a large fire-proof net and began to stake it into the ground so that I was creating a roof of sorts over the crater. I didn't know how my dragon was going to feel when it woke up, and I didn't want to risk it flying away.

"You know, that's just going to make them more angry, right?" Sula called from where she sat. "They don't like feeling trapped and they don't like our weapons. Hiccup had much more luck getting Toothless to trust him so long as he didn't have any weapons on him. I think they can smell the iron we use," she went on.

"Fine, I won't use any weapons on it," I said as I continued to put the net in place. "But I'm not letting it get away. One thing you forget about your hero, Hiccup, is that he injured Toothless in the beginning. The Night Fury couldn't fly. You think these dragons are going to stay put when they wake up?" I asked, finishing putting the net in place and rising to my feet with my knuckles on my sides before I crawled back into the crater to get a closer look at my prize.

"I suppose you're right. It might take longer for them to warm up to us that way, though," she cooed.

"We don't have time for that. We have less than two days to get them home. If they don't 'warm up to us' then we'll have to drag them back so we finish the quest within our allotted time," I explained to her.

"I already told you, I don't really care about passing the exit exam," she said.

"Well I do," I spat back at her, sending a hard glare in her direction. She just leered at me in return, so I decided to change the subject.

"I wonder what they were fighting about. Do you think it's mating season and they were fighting for a female?" I asked, but Sula just chortled at me. "What!" I asked, not looking the least bit amused.

"I seriously don't think that's the problem considering the Daybreaker is female and the Night Fury is male. I don't think dragons swing that way! It was probably a fight over territory," she laughed. I blinked stupidly. I hadn't even thought about checking the gender of the dragons. Sula seemed to think I didn't know how, because she went on to explain. "Female dragons are made for speed, so their wingspan is greater. Male dragons are made to maneuver, since they DO battle for females during mating season and need fancier moves in the sky. Male dragons have longer tails to allow them to be more versatile."

"I knew that," I said flatly.

"So, what do you think you'll name her?" she asked me as she continued to stroke her sleeping dragon.

I sat for a long moment feeling rather stumped. What WOULD I name it? In Rok, we really didn't name our dragons because they were just objects to us, but I did feel the need to give her a name. I reached out and placed my hand just above the slits where her nose was and thought. She was a creature of the sky and her species was named accordingly. She was also rare and beautiful, like she was a draconian angel. Then a name popped into my head.

"Jestic," I said, looking up toward Sula to see what she thought of that name. She grinned.

"As in 'majestic?'" she asked. I just nodded and she beamed at me as if she couldn't be happier. "I think that's a lovely name! I'm going to call mine Xiao Shou Ge. It's Chinese for 'night song,' but I think I'll just call him Shou," she went on. Then she blinekd and stared at me with a blank look on her face before a suspicious one settled in. "If anyone asks, though, his name is Throttle. Dad wants me to be a big strong Viking; he'd be pretty displeased if he knew my dragon had a Chinese name," she went on.

"I don't think that'll be a problem since none of the adults really think about giving dragons names," I pointed out.

"But still!" she exclaimed, tossing her arms out.

"Okay, okay. Throttle it is," I agreed as I rolled my eyes at her again. She was such a weird girl, but oddly enough, I felt like I was getting along better with her than I ever had any of the others. Her views on dragons made so much more sense to me, but I was still the chief's son, so I couldn't just up and completely support her. I'd just go along with what she was saying, but I wouldn't never agree with her out loud. That was the type of stubborn Viking I was.

Following Sula's lead, we started a new little campfire and got some fish cooked for ourselves, leaving some raw for Jestic and Shou. She explained to me that Hiccup had discovered the meal thing completely by accident and hadn't prepared any for himself, so Toothless felt the need to feed raw fish to him in a similar manner to the way a mother bird feeds her young. I certainly didn't want to eat raw fish.

Jestic had been skeptical, of course, when she first woke up. Her large yellow eyes eyed me suspiciously as she looked from me to the plate of fish before me. Her slightly split tongue licked at her scaly lips as they looked at the plate and then back up at me. Her ears were completely erect, as if she was both completely alert and curious.

"Aren't you going to take one?" I asked the dragon. I looked over at Sula and Shou and they were both enjoying their meal together. This made my face fall into a leer. I sighed and reached forward, picking up one of the raw fish. As I moved, Jestic's ears tipped back and her teeth popped out of her gums and she growled lowly at me for moving. I paused and looked up at her, but cautiously continued to take the fish and rise to my feet.

"Here," I said to her optimistically, holding the fish out for her. She huffed at me. It reminded me of how a girl might smack their gums in protest at someone, but it came out as a small snort from the dragon. "Don't be such a priss. I know you're probably hungry," I said, waving the fish around before her face. Her head wiggled to and fro along with the lifeless aquatic creature and she licked her lips again. When she noticed I was watching her, she huffed again and turned her face away from me.

"Fine!" I said flatly, throwing my arms into the air. "Have it your way. I'll just eat all this fish myself!" I said. One of Jestic's ears rose and she opened one eye again in my direction. It was like she was waiting for me to take the first bit. "What? You think I poinsoned it? Come on!" I exclaimed.

"You did trap her in a net you know," Sula broke in.

"I didn't ask you!" I seethed in Sula's direction. Wilting, I looked down at the raw fish in my hands. Again, Jestic looked from the fish to my face as if she were questioning if I was really going to eat it or not. "I really... hate my life," I groaned. Hesitantly, I sank my teeth into the soft scales of the fish and forced a small chunk of meat loose.

To be honest, it was the single most disgusting thing I'd ever eaten. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if it had been wrapped in seaweed and the scaled has been cleaned off. Luckily, Jestic seemed pleased by my display. She rose to her feet and skittered forward, sniffing like a puppy at the remains of the fish I had just bitten off of.

"Here, take it! All yours!" I gagged as I tossed it into the air. She opened her mouth, which was again lacking teeth, and watched the fish fly into the air. As if came back down, her teeth ejected and she snapped them closed around the fish before gulping it down. I would have been more impressed if I wasn't searching for my canteen. I think my appetite was completely gone.

"Where the heck is my water?" I sighed to myself as I dug around. Then I felt a nudge at my elbow. Turning, Jestic's large yellow eyes were looking innocently at me. In her one again toothless jaws was the strap to my canteen. I just blinked at her for a moment before I reached out and took it from her.

"She likes you," Sula observed as I pat the dragon on her head. I didn't say anything. I was in a state of awe. I had never seen this side of a dragon before. Now Hiccup's words with my father came back to me and I realized the Vikings from Berk were definitely on to something that we just didn't know. I'd have to try and tell my father as soon as I got home! Little did I know, back in the village the people were distracted with much more serious business.

* * *

Author's Note

Sorry if this seems a little rushed. I didn't want it to drag out too long because I have yet to even establish the actual plot of this story yet as far as what you've read so far goes. Still, I hope you enjoyed it so far! ~Emm


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